Simon Barrow

Theology is ‘wrestling with the unfathomable mystery of God’, but to enlighten rather than to obscure, says Simon Barrow, paying tribute to two Mennonite scholars and pastors, Alan and Eleanor Kreider, as part of a festschrift entitled 'Forming Christian Habits in Post-Christendom'.

The prospects of settlements in some of the most intractable situations in the world today, as well as in domestic political wrangles over the health service, education and more, depend upon a host of unseen actors, says Simon Barrow. They create the conditions for the more formal political mechanisms to make progress.

The recent horrific terror attacks in Norway seem to have been occasioned in part by the rise of fearful far-right movements which use Christian language as part of their guise. The answer to these should not be accommodation, says Simon Barrow, but an attempt to build robust civic alliances for social justice and against racism and xenophobia.

The ‘Big Society’ is becoming a fresh political battleground over the summer, says Simon Barrow. Shrinking the state by galvanising more money and resources from private citizens through volunteering, delegating and contracting is central to the Prime Minister’s approach – both to running the country and to keeping his own party together. But the strategy is beset with disagreement, and a huge 'reality gap'.

Where does the Church of Scotland – not the established church, but still a self-proclaimed ‘national’ one – now sit within a changing Scottish national settlement, following the formalities of its 2011 General Assembly? Simon Barrow looks at some of the issues.

Football is woven into the historical, cultural and social fabric of communities in Scotland and across Britain, but media attention to 'soccernomics' focuses heavily on the English Premier League, says Simon Barrow. There are some clear reasons for this, but we definitely need some fresh ideas about ‘football as if fans mattered’ which begin with the wider picture, rather than consigning the non-elite to our peripheral vision.

Will the five different polls that took place on 5 May 2011 prove to be a watershed for politics in Britain? It depends where you see the axis for change and the key tipping points, says Simon Barrow. There are at least two distinct ways of narrating differential outcomes.

Monarchy as an institution rooted in inherited wealth and pure eugenic privilege stands in contrast with, and contradiction to, the levelling Gospel of Jesus Christ, argues Simon Barrow. But a kind of mythology and ritualising in the popular imagination prevents both Christians and others from seeing what is really going on, and what is wrong with it.

Good Friday is behind us, Easter Sunday ahead. In the meantime, says Simon Barrow, we must inhabit the long, uncertain Saturday. Indeed, we Christians may need considerable help from others to be able do this truthfully, such is the tendency to be pulled back a day or pushed forward one. For Saturday is an indelible and crucial part of the Easter story. Without Saturday, Friday has no end and Sunday has no beginning.

How, we may ask on Good Friday, can wholeness, deliverance and healing possibly flow from a state execution resulting in the unjust violent death of a good person - one in whom his friends and followers felt they had met divine love at its most tangible and engaging? Simon Barrow explores the troubling mystery at the core of Christian belief, and looks at ways theology can address it intellectually, humanly and practically.